Current research and projects

My work in Socratic moral psychology is not only an effort to uncover the theory of human desire and flourishing described in Plato's Socratic dialogues, but also an examination of how those theories can contribute to a viable explanation of human behavior, and to a notion of virtuous behavior that can compete against later and more current theories.

My current research projects on Platonic metaphysics and epistemology are likewise efforts to illuminate—with help from Plato—our assumptions about our ability to come to know the world of perception, and what they require us to assume about the metaphysical structure that lies behind our perceptions.

Professional biography

Naomi Reshotko is professor of philosophy at the University of Denver and served as departmental chair from 2002 to 2013. She has also taught at Central Michigan University and the University of Colorado-Boulder.

After studying modern dance at the University of Illinois-Champaign/Urbana, she transferred to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she received a BA, MA and PhD in philosophy. In her dissertation (advised by Terry Penner), she argued that Fred Dretske's theory of desire could be made more coherent were he to adapt his theory to the theory of motivation found in Plato's Socratic Dialogues.

Many of her subsequent publications, including her book, Socratic Virtue: Making the Best of the Neither Good-nor-Bad (Cambridge University Press, 2006), continue to develop a coherent Socratic theory of motivation, and the thesis that Socratic thinking about virtue and motivation can form the nucleus of a viable moral psychology and action theory.

She is currently working on two long term projects on the relationship between Plato's metaphysics and his epistemology. Under the working title, "The Ordinary Person and Plato's Forms: Why Posit What We Can't Know?," she is examining the nature of Plato's objects of knowledge (the Forms) and what they necessitate about recollection and other assumptions that Plato seems to make about how we grasp the object of inquiry. The working title for the second project is "Opining Beauty Itself: Doxa and the Forms in Plato's Dialogues." It examines the relationship between doxa (opinion/belief) and the object of the knowledge (the Forms) in Plato's Dialogues. She has published articles on Plato's metaphysics and epistemology.